It was a 45 min drive to the Undara Volcanic NP but Steve kept us occupied by telling us all about the local flora and fauna in the region along with some other interesting local stories. He was enjoyable to listen to. He made the Savannah landscape we were passing through (which was fairly monotonous and uninteresting to the uneducated) sound so diverse and interesting. Lauren and Sam enjoyed his commentary also, but Hannah and Beth needed other diversions (like games on the iPhone:)).
As far as the NP goes, it was originally privately owned cattle station, owned by the Collins family. At some stage about 30 yrs ago, the lava tubes running underground were discovered. The Collins family eventually opened up the Undara area to visitors. They set up their own tourist complex in the NP called Undara Experience. Tours by both Bedrock Village Caravan Park and Undara Experience are the only way the public is allowed to visit the lava tubes – due to the desire to preserve them.
Before going underground into the lava tubes, the first part of the tour was to walk up on to Kalkani Crater and walk around the rim – this was part of a volcano which exploded many years ago and so left a crater within. The walk basically took us all the way around the rim. Steve kept up a commentary on different flora as well as the geology of the area as we walked. The rocks in the area were scoria (like golf balls with little craters in them due to the air bubbles in them before they solidified). They were apparently similar to rocks on the lunar landscape. The view from up on the rim was vast and we could see lots of volcanic vents all around the region.
After walking back down to the bottom, we had morning tea at the picnic area, provided by the tour. There were yummy home cooked biscuits with a cuppa or cordial.
Then we drove to where we would enter the lava tubes. Basically these are thought to have been formed by the Undarra shield volcano ‘boiling over’ sending molten lava coursing through the surrounding landscape. We went into 2 different tubes and Steve described different aspects of them. The 2nd tube was longer and had tiny bats inhabiting it, which were mostly hidden during the day, but we were able to see some.
We walked back to the bus and started the drive back to the van park at Mt Surprise. It was about 1pm by now. Hannah and Beth had had enough of the walking around by now, but had been quite tolerant of all the adult type talking and looking for most of the tour. We had packed some sandwiches of our own, which was just as well because Hannah especially (who we think must have hollow legs) was quite hungry and her level of tolerance reduces sharply when she needs food.
The drive back was filled with commentary about good fishing areas and the types of fish that can be caught, the best bait etc. Also more stories about the locals. We arrived back just before 2pm and went to our van to have something to eat and a rest.
The 2 younger girls were keen for a swim, so I took them to do that. Then Michael took them to do some putt putt golf. Lauren and Sam wanted to go down to the nearby river which Steve had been mentioning in his talk about fishing. We gave them a walkie talkie, reminded them to be careful of snakes and let them go.
I had noticed an electric oven in the camp kitchen the previous night and was quite pleased as I had bought a premarinated roast lamb during my previous grocery shop thinking our portable BBQ had a cover and we could cook it that way – but it didn’t. So I took the opportunity of using the camp kitchen oven to cook the roast. It turned out quite well. We again ate at the communal dining area – it was a bit less cramped than in the caravan. The kids asked if they could go for a night-time swim (there were no closing hours for the pool). I hadn’t given Hannah and Beth their shower at that stage, so I figured they could have a 10 min swim and then a warm shower before bed. All 4 kids had a swim and then a shower and Hannah and Beth went to sleep quite quickly after such a big day.
As it was only a 2hr drive to Mt Surprise, we decided we could see a few more sights around the tablelands before we drove west. The others hadn’t seen the curtain fig yesterday near Yungaburra, so we drove there and had a look at it – a great sight again. Then we went to the Petersen Creek at Yungaburra, where there was a platypus viewing platform – it was unlikely we would see any platypuses during the day though, as they mainly came out at dawn or dusk. But there was a lovely walk beside the Petersen River which we decided to do. It was shady and very pretty and we were the only ones on the walk. After about 10 mins walking beside the river we came to a suspension bridge that went over the river. The kids thought it was pretty cool. There were also a few stepping stones out onto the river which they played on for a little while, then we headed back to the car. Then we drove down towards Mt Hipapymee NP where there was another walk to see a crater and another waterfall called Dinner Falls. It was only a short walk. We saw the crater first which was filled with water. Then continued on the circuit to Dinner Falls. We had noticed a tour bus with a backpackers sign on it at the carpark, and we met up with them at the falls. A few of the guys were in the water below the waterfall – one of the girls jumped in and her face indicated how cold it was! We didn’t have our swimmers with us on that walk and thankfully Hannah didn’t ask to go swimming this time:).
We had some sandwiches for lunch once we got back to the car and then headed off towards Ravenshoe (which Lauren and Sam kept trying to call ‘Raven Shoe’). We read that this town was the highest one in QLD at 962m. Being high up it got quite windy at times and it was the sight of the first wind farm in QLD – about 15 modern windmills standing on the hills. We saw some of them as we drove past, but it was a bit of an overcast and misty day, so we couldn’t see all of them.
About half an hour west from Ravenshoe was a town called Innot Springs which had a thermal spring in it. We stopped at the creek and went down to feel the water. We had experienced thermal springs 2 yrs ago when we had visited Katherine and Mataranka in the NT. It was amazing how quickly the water changed temperature along the creek. Near where the centre of the spring was it was extremely hot (we didn’t even touch it – you could see the steam coming off the water). About 5 metres away it was of a temperature where you could sit in it and it was nice and warm. Then another 5 m along it was cold. There were a few other people already sitting in the nice spot. We let the kids walk around in the water nearby for a little while. At one stage Hannah walked a metre too far towards the centre of the spring on some sand and then put her foot in the water – she cried out from the heat. I quickly took her down to the cold area of water and got her to stand in that for a while. There wasn’t any serious injury, but it made me think that in this day of public liability, I was surprised there wasn’t a warning sign about how hot the water is to step in at certain points – it wouldn’t be too hard for a child to get a burn. Hannah was fine though and they finished their paddle and we went back to the car.
It was then another 40 mins or so on to Mt Surprise where we had booked in for 2 nights at the Bedrock Village Caravan Park, which we’d read good things about. We checked in and set up at our site. There was a pool and a putt putt golf course, and a nice area for the kids to ride their bikes. They did some bike riding and had a swim. We also booked in for the half day tour to the Undara Lava Tubes the next day.
For dinner that night we joined in the dinner prepared by the caravan park, which was pumpkin soup, bangers and damper. It was yummy. We had it at the camp kitchen, along with other travellers – but didn’t get to talk with others much that night – they were all engaged in conversation with others already – and our youngest children were the youngest there – so perhaps they thought we would be too busy for talking (which can be correct some nights!). Then it was back to the caravan for the usual night time routine.
We then headed off to see some of the sights. There were a couple of interesting giant fig trees to visit. One was called Cathedral Fig and one was called Curtain Fig. These trees seeded on the branch of another tree quite high up and their roots started growing downwards towards the ground. They have quite large root systems and the result is an amazing structure. We went to see the Cathedral Fig first. It was great, but I really was feeling out of sorts today and getting annoyed at little things. So I asked if I could go back to the caravan while Michael took the kids sightseeing. We had been going to do the ‘waterfall circuit’ and see some of the many waterfalls around there. We’d packed the swimmers in the car in case any of the children had decided to brave the cold water.
So Michael dropped me back to the caravan and I was able to rest and have some down time to myself. The others did the waterfall circuit and Hannah and Beth had a swim in the Malanda Falls – but only stayed in for 5 mins. They came back not long before dinner. They’d had a nice afternoon, which was good.
Before leaving Cape Trib campground, we drove the 5-6 kms north to Cape Trib itself and did the short walk to the lookout over Cape Trib Bay. We could also see Mt Misery and Mt Sorrow. (As someone said, Cpt Cook obviously had a bad time here with the names he gave places). Then we walked down onto the beach and then back to the car.
We drove back down the Cape Tribulation Rd, this time stopping at the Alexandra Range Lookout to see the view south towards Port Douglas and beyond. We went back across the Daintree River ferry and then south towards Mossman. We were able to get 3G again, so I rang and booked in to a caravan park at Lake Eacham – only $40 a night which was a good price.
We had run out of bread and lunch things, so had decided to buy lunch at a cafe today – we did this at Mossman. We weren’t very impressed with the cafe though as we had to wait a long time for our burgers and chips to come. There was also a bit of a funny smell there every now and then – which we eventually found out from a local, who heard us complaining about the smell, was the burnt molasses smell from the nearby sugar mill. The kids had a play at the nearby playground, which was a very nice one with some interesting and unusual play equipment.
Then we turned inland towards Mt Molloy and then onto the Mulligans Hwy which would take us to Atherton. We passed through Mareeba again (coming from a different way this time) and got to Atherton about 3pm. We stopped here for me to do some grocery shopping, and then continued on the further 20mins to Lake Eacham. We found the caravan park with its very friendly owners and set up. It was noticeably colder here. The caravan park had a resident pig and 2 goats which we were allowed to feed (grass and leaves) and a duck pond with many ducks, hens, and scrub turkeys and fowls wandering around. The kids enjoyed seeing all these things and having a bit of a bike ride before it was time for dinner. Sam made tacos for dinner tonight. We actually had to put the heater on in the van for a little while (after having used the air conditioner at Daintree and Cape Trib).
We were actually quite hungry when we got to Cooktown so decided to have lunch straight away. We had brought our own sandwiches, but Michael suggested we also buy some hot chips. I thought a couple of milkshakes to share would be nice also. We stopped at a cafe in the main street to buy these and were glad we weren’t buying too much – the 2 milkshakes and a serve of chips was $14. We didn’t know of any particular parks to eat at, but I’d read about a lookout area at the top of Grassy Hill, so suggested we go there to eat. We drove up as far as we were allowed to drive and found a place to sit and eat which was in the shade and overlooked the main street of town and the Endeavor River. After eating, we walked further up to the very top and saw the wonderful almost 360 degree view. We read about how Captain Cook and Joseph Banks had climbed the hill a couple of times during their stay to view the surrounding reefs out to sea and determine how they were going to get safely back out to sea after the Endeavour was repaired.
We walked back down to the car and drove down to the town centre again. I had also read of a walking tour taking in most of the historic sights around Cooktown. We drove to the harbour area to start this. Here was a statue of Captain Cook, a memorial to the beaching of the Endeavour, a cannon sent to Cooktown in the late 1800s to protect against the considered threat of Russian invasion (hadn’t heard that part of history before), and some other monuments. There was also a ‘musical ship’ which was a ship structure intended for kids to play on and they could make all sorts of music from different ‘instruments’. The kids enjoyed playing on this, and, true to form, Hannah and Bethany wanted to pretend they were Captain Cook and the crew sailing in and having to repair the ship. They convinced Sam to join their play (Lauren was feeling unwell today and so wanted to rest in the car at this point) and asked me to be the narrator. Since I had been teaching them this part of history, I knew the story, so was able to narrate. They had a practice run and then Michael started to video it – unfortunately the batteries ran out before we reached the end, but we got through most of it – I’m sure they’ll enjoy watching that again later – and hopefully that part of Australian history will stick in their memory.
We then drove to the James Cook Museum which we’d heard was very good. It was housed in the old convent building which was the oldest brick building in Cooktown. It had a story all of its own. We spent about 45mins at the museum and I really enjoyed it. We saw the original of the anchor and one of the cannons from the Endeavour which had been thrown overboard and which they’d recovered in about 1969. We read the story of the recovery expedition. One of the most interesting things I read at the museum was the first hand account of the meeting of Cook and his crew by the aboriginal tribes of the area – the story had been passed down through generations and was told and written down. There were other aspects to the museum – the gold rush which brought people to the area in the 1850s, the Chinese influence (many Chinese came for the gold) and other local history.
Our last stop at Cooktown was the Botanical Gardens which had an information centre and also a display on local flora and fauna. We had hoped to do the walk through the gardens down to Finch Bay, but after doing what we wanted to at the information centre, we realised we weren’t going to have time. The kids were keen for a swim and we asked about safe swimming holes in the Cooktown area and on the way back to Cape Trib. We were given a few options, one being a swimming hole out the back of the Lion’s Den Hotel. We thought this sounded like a good idea.
So we started the trip back. The Lion’s Den Hotel was only 30 mins from Cooktown. We found the river, which had several nice swimming areas. We had some bikkies for afternoon tea and the kids had a swim for about half an hour.
Then it was back in the car and another one and half hours back to Cape Trib. It was about 6.15 when we arrived back at the van park. We had found out yesterday that they make wood fired pizzas here every lunchtime and dinner time, so we had decided we would do that for dinner tonight. It was a nice easy and yummy dinner. Usual night time routine.
This cruise was quite different to the one yesterday, both because of the different location and because of the different tour guide. This tour guide was a mangrove expert and loved the flora on the river, but didn’t seem to be as interested in the fauna (except for crocs). We saw about 3 crocs again on this cruise – 2 of them well known by the tour guides and given names, the other one too small to yet be given a name (apparently there is a 90 percent mortality rate with the baby crocs – eaten by bull sharks or larger fish etc.) He told us there have been only 35 recorded cases of humans dying from croc attacks since European history in in Australia – 2 of them have been on the Daintree River (didn’t find out when). He gave us quite a talk about the mangroves – the adaptations they have in their systems to be able to thrive in salt water. There were quite a lot more mangroves here because it was closer upstream and so more salty. I enjoyed the cruise again for the different information we learnt this time.
We then went across on the vehicular ferry. It was not a very wide river, so this didn’t take long. Then we were driving thought he rainforest up the Cape Tribulation Road. From as soon as we drove off the ferry, this road was under a continual canopy of rainforest, with only the occasional glimpse of sky and occasional glimpse of sea. It was not at all what I had expected, but it was so different to any other region I had driven through previously. It was a slow winding road and we averaged around 50km per hour. There were a few stops along the way on our detailed map that we had. The first one, which was a lookout, we couldn’t stop at as they didn’t allow caravans on that section of the road. The next one was the discovery centre where there were a few walks. It was a narrow road into there, but we managed it and then had a walk along a boardwalk in the rainforest, once again with some informative signs. We found out how the scrub turkeys would build a mound for their nests and from then on Hannah and Beth would point out the scrub turkey mounds whenever we went on walks.
There were a couple more places we could have stopped but we decided to get to our caravan park first which was right up the top of this road near Cape Trib itself. We had rung ahead that morning and they only had unpowered sites for 2 nights (we could have had a powered for one night but then have had to move to an unpowered the next day). The unpowered sites couldn’t be reserved so the lady I spoke to on the phone suggested we get there no later than 3pm. It was 1.30 by now and we thought we should go straight there. We arrived around 2pm and spoke to the lady at reception. Because we were planning on doing a day trip to Cooktown the next day, we wanted to be able to leave our camp fridge on power with refridgable things in it. We wanted to ask the lady if we might be able to leave it with them plugged in to a power point. It turned out she had a couple of ’emergency’ powered areas up her sleeve which she said we could check out. One was right next to one of the amenities blocks which had a power point on the outside of it. Michael had a look at this and thought it would be suitable. So, as it turned out, we ended up with the equivalent of a powered site for the 2 nights. And the amenities block was not the main one – it was a smaller one down one end, out of the way a bit. We set up and the kids went to check out the beach – the campsite was right on the beach, like it had been at Armstrong Beach. The tide was right out again and lots of people had taken their camp chairs out onto the hard sand to sit and read or relax. There seemed to be a bit group of young foreign tourists there – German I think. Anyway, the kids enjoyed some time on the beach, swinging on a tree rope they found, while Michael and I did some tidying up and odd jobs.
One of the other places we had planned to stop was a swimming hole (croc safe). So we drove a little way back to that spot, called Mason’s Creek, and walked to the swimming area. To the delight of the kids there was a rope on a tree to swing into the water. The 3 older ones did this, but Bethany was not quite confident enough. She enjoyed just splashing in the water though. It was a nice end to a nice day. We went back to the van park, had showers and then had dinner (spag bol from the frozen meals). We hoped to get an earlyish start tomorrow for the day trip to Cooktown.
The camp ground and just the area itself was so nice, we thought we might even stay an extra night here and have a day to enjoy the area after our visit to Cooktown.
We bought tickets for the cruise which was just near our van park and went on the 9am cruise which went for an hour. One advantage of the cruise company we choose was that it gave you a multi-pass voucher, so you could go on the cruise as many times as you wanted in a period of about 5 days. And the cruise departed from 2 different areas – from Daintree Village where we were and also from near the ferry terminal further upstream where there were more mangroves. We thought we would do the one near the ferry terminal either this afternoon or tomorrow morning.
The cruise in the morning was almost a private tour – there was our family and one other older couple on the boat. The tour guide, Lex, was a local guy who actually grew up only just across the river on a farm with cattle and pretty much spent all his life in Daintree. I couldn’t imagine growing up on a river where crocs were prevalent.Lex was very much a small town guy with such a slang accent, it was sometimes hard to understand him. We saw the big croc again that we’d seen the day before on the river bank – apparently he was the ‘big daddy’ of this part of the river – there were some other smaller crocs in this area too and we saw another 2 on this cruise. Lex was amazing at being able to spot birds and wildlife in the trees beside the river. We would just see trees, but he would suddenly stop the boat and point out a tree snake or a frog-mouth bird (both of which were camouflaged on the tree and quite hard to see, even up close). He also knew the plants around there very well. He went close enough to an hibiscus tree for us all to pick a flower and then showed us how to pull it apart to eat the bottom part of the flower. I enjoyed the tour very much. We got off the boat just after 10am and walked the 50m back to our van and had some morning tea.
The kids played outside for a little while and then we had an early lunch, because I wanted everyone to have a rest after lunch today. Bethany and Hannah seemed to be getting tired a lot – we were having fairly full days. We all lay down and put on an audio CD to listen to for a while – I ended up having a bit of a sleep, but Hannah and Beth didn’t – they had a quiet time at least.
Around 3.30 we headed off in the car to have a bit of a scenic drive. We followed the road which ran beside the river downstream a bit. There was quite a bit of cattle around in the pastures – they were Brahman cows are Brahman crosses – they looked a bit more like bullocks than cows. We drove past some hills which the kids called ‘tiny wings’ hills (after the game on the iPhone/iPad) – they were smooth rolling hills with lots of little humps. We drove south again past Wonga beach and to an area just north of Mossman which had a scenic drive. There was also a WW2 historic site where a bomb had been dropped by the Japanese. On the way back towards Daintree we stopped at one of the beaches beside the road and went for a walk along it. Then back to the car and back to the van park. It was shower time for the younger girls while Lauren and Sam did dinner (BBQ meat and salad and bread). Usual night-time routine.